Omega Ensemble 2025: Celebrating 20 years of music by Maddy Briggs, Limelight Magazine 29 November, 2024

Omega celebrates its milestone with a host of world premiere works, internationally regarded collaborators and a refreshed “vision for the future”.

In 2025, Omega Ensemble celebrates its 20th anniversary, and, according to Artistic Director David Rowden, it is only just getting started.

“While it’s certainly worth taking a moment from the busy everyday to acknowledge this milestone, for me the last twenty years have felt like just the beginning,” Rowden said.

“Our 2025 National Concert Season is a vision for the future: celebrating local talent and connecting Australian stages with global movements; telling important stories and reflecting the world in which we live; and redefining the concert hall as a place of belonging – a place for everyone.”

First up in the celebration is an encore performance of 2024’s Dark with Excessive Bright, returning for an appearance at next year’s Sydney Festival on 18 January. The program pairs Missy Mazzoli’s titular work with Samuel Adams’ Lighthouse, a work commissioned and premiered by OE.

Cellist and conductor Umberto Clerici will join OE as guest director and performer for La Musica Notturna in Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle from 24–27 March.

In a program that brings the cello into the spotlight, Clerici takes on Vivaldi’s Cello Concerto in B minor alongside Boccherini’s quintet Musica notturne delle strade di Madrid and Sollima’s Violoncelles, vibrez! for two cellos and strings. In the same program, Omega also offers its first commissioned world premiere for 2025 – UK composer Peter Gregson’s Concerto Grosso for Cello and Clarinet.

The next program, Distant World, features another world premiere work, this time, from Melbourne-based composer Miriama Young. With Jabra Latham’s Fire Music, Vasks’ Piano Quartet and Pärt’s crystalline masterwork Spiegel im Spiegel, it will be performed in Melbourne and Sydney, 13–17 May.

Elevator Music (16–21 August) has UK clarinettist Michael Collins bolster the OE lineup for two striking clarinet concertos – one Aaron Copeland’s, the other a brand new Double Clarinet Concerto from Graeme Koehne written for the pairing of Collins and Rowden. Set to tour Sydney, Melbourne and Newcastle, the program also includes Anna Clyne’s Stride.

Earlier this month, Omega announced the composers selected for the 2025 CoLAB: Composer Accelerator Program – Cassie To, Callum O’Reilly, Alexandra Mison and Oliver John Cameron. The works composed over the course of their mentorship will receive their world premiere at the Sydney Opera House in New Now 2025 on 25 September in a showcase of the strength and spirit of emerging Australian compositional voices.

OE joins forces with Sydney Dance Company for Unungkati Yantatja (22 October – 1 November). The work is a collaboration between composer William Barton and choreographer Stephen Page explores connection to country and draws upon Barton’s songline. Performed at the RoslynPacker Theatre, the work will be presented within SDC’s triple bill, Continuum,

Closing off the 2025 celebration is Rare Sugar, which takes its title from the 2007 work by composer (and clarinettist) Nigel Westlake. The program also offers a world premiere work from Australian composer Ella Macens, drawing upon her Latvian heritage, and Bartók’s Hungarian folk-infused Contrasts.

https://www.omegaensemble.com.au/